Hung Up On Bork`s `Lynching`

October 15, 1987|By Steve Daley.

Imagine: Ronald Reagan`s latest Supreme Court nominee, Judge Robert Bork, was done in, ``savaged by the ACLU, AFL-CIO, NAACP and NOW powerhouse operating out of a Democratic `war room` in the Senate chamber.`` Or so it goes in the world according to New York Times columnist William Safire.

Those of you who believe only what you see and hear must be shocked to learn that the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women (remember the Equal Rights Amendment?) and Big Labor (remember the air-traffic controllers?) have been transformed into a juggernaut in the Bork affair. All with the help of ``a media manipulated to feed the bandwagon psychology,`` of course.

In short, ``a lynch mob,`` in the words of Washington pundit David Broder, who was quoted by his President in a Tuesday speech.

It`s true. Using all manner of fiendish tactics better suited to life in Communist Russia, including direct-mail campaigns-the latter perfected by the political right in service to Ronald Reagan-anti-Bork forces appear to have won the battle. It is, arguably, the first significant domestic defeat endured by the Reagan administration in seven years of riding high on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Until the other day, few of us were aware that this consortium of left-wing goo-goos (as we say in Chicago) was possessed of awesome political clout, capable of overturning presidential nominees with what columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak called ``unprecedented character assassination.``

We haven`t exactly seen these groups flushed with success in the 1980s. For example, the ``lynch mob`` that is keeping some guardians of liberty up nights was unable to derail William Rehnquist, now the Chief Justice of the United States. Nor was there a modicum of success for those opposed to Justices Scalia or O`Connor.

If memory serves, there were few outcries about the ``politicization`` of the Supreme Court nominating process when Rehnquist`s backers solicited for write-in campaigns and offered the bottom line on phone calls and letters to the White House expressing support for the nominee.

Indeed, until the Republican failure in the midterm elections of 1986, even those ostensibly critical of Ronald Reagan kept turning back to those enormous victories in 1980 and 1984. Like the 900-pound gorilla, a man who won 96 of 100 states in two presidential elections gets to sleep where he wants. And appoint who he wants.

But that electoral loss in 1986 was the root of the Senate`s pending rejection of Robert Bork. In that election, Reagan campaigned for Republican control of the Senate, and for his social agenda that included a judicial legacy on the Supreme Court. And black votes in southern and border states resulted in a Senate which, in columnist Tom Wicker`s words, ``was capable of rejecting a nominee who had opposed major civil rights advances.``

On television and in the public prints, it`s clear that Bork and Reagan supporters have thrived so long between defeats that the sensation of loss renders them numb, but hardly speechless. Seven years of pitching shutouts appears to have deprived the administration and its most ardent supporters of the ability to recognize change.

The story on Bork will not be found in any study of television behavior, facial hair, left-wing chicanery or any toting up of column inches in the newspapers.

Nor did ``the media`` unhorse Judge Bork. The ``smear campaign`` against Judge Bork has been passionately detailed almost daily, for example, on ``The MacNeil-Lehrer-Hatch NewsHour`` on PBS. Between the Iran-contra hearings and the Bork imbroglio, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) has secured more air time than Vanna White.

And whatever you think of Joseph Biden and Ted Kennedy, the point men for the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, they hardly possess dazzling candle power.

Over the years, in fact, Kennedy has swollen into a genuine television disaster. Wedged into his Senatorial suit, he sounds smug and shrill and pompous when questioning even friendly witnesses. And all that happened to Chairman Biden during the public hearings on Bork is that his presidential hopes went south and he was transformed into a national joke. Some lynch mob. Had anyone been looking, the answer to what happened to the Bork nomination could have been found at the turn of the century in Finley Peter Dunne`s imaginary tavern on Archer Avenue, where Mr. Dooley held sway.

The saloonkeeper knew then what White House lobbyists and hand-wringing columnists are learning now: ``Th` supreme coort follows the iliction returns.``